Looking back at 2025: A year of remarkable firsts
With box office revenue approaching 3.7 trillion VND (141.2 million USD), nearly double that of 2024 (72.6 million USD), Vietnamese films made a spectacular leap in 2025. Revenue was relatively evenly distributed across genres, from historical and revolutionary war films to action, detective thrillers, horror and family dramas.
This not only demonstrates increasingly diverse audience tastes but also reflects a positive reality: the market’s production capacity has expanded, compelling filmmakers to compete on quality rather than relying on established viewing habits.
For the first time, a Vietnamese film achieved what once seemed unimaginable: an all-time record of 714 billion VND (27.3 million USD) in revenue with Mua do – Red Rain. For the first time, a war film—Dia dao – Mat troi trong bong toi, also known as Tunnel: Sun in the Dark—was financed entirely with private funding. For the first time, Vietnamese films captured 62% of the total cinema market share, with the top 10 highest-grossing titles alone generating 2.8 trillion VND (107 million USD) and outperforming numerous foreign blockbusters released at the same time.
It was also the first time that the long-standing formula of “Tran Thanh, Ly Hai and the rest” was broken. Productions by directors such as Ham Tran, Victor Vu, Thu Trang and Duong Minh Chien collectively built an impressive record. Among them were Tu chien tren khong (Hijacked, 252 billion VND), Tham tu Kien: Ky an khong dau (Detective Kien: The headless horror, 249 billion VND), Nha gia tien (The ancestral home, 242 billion VND), Nu hon bac ty (The billion-dollar kiss, 212 billion VND), and Truy tim Long Dien Huong (Fish, Fists and Ambergris, 196 billion VND), among others.
This marks an encouraging step forward, making the market more diverse. Looking back at 2024 and 2023, films by Tran Thanh and Ly Hai alone accounted for half of the total box-office revenue.
Equally significant, Vietnamese film distribution has, for the first time, broken away from a purely seasonal business model. Release schedules are now spread more evenly throughout the year rather than concentrated around public holidays. As a result, domestic productions have increased in number, improved in quality and diversified in both themes and narrative styles. Their consistent presence across increasingly modern cinema complexes has fostered the habit of watching Vietnamese films year-round, rather than ceding much of the calendar to imported titles.
From “trading in dreams” to “an investment-worthy sector”
After just six days of release, the Tet 2026 cinema season witnessed a compelling race among four films, each offering distinct themes and storytelling styles. While there were inevitable frontrunners and laggards, overall results were impressive.
According to Box Office Viet Nam, a data aggregation and analysis platform, total box office revenue reached 409.4 billion VND (15.6 million USD) after only six days of the Tet holiday, up 33% compared with the same period during Tet last year (306 billion VND (11.66 million USD)). Although the gap between the top-grossing film and the others was considerable, the overall success of Vietnamese films this Tet season has boosted investor confidence in pursuing filmmaking ventures in the near future. It signals a market operating more smoothly and increasingly moving towards professionalisation and industrialisation.
Several years ago, Vice Chairwoman of BHD Company, Ngo Thi Bich Hanh, remarked that “investing in cinema is trading in dreams”. It is a creative pursuit driven by passion yet fraught with financial risk—something producers bear in mind when committing “an entire fortune” to bring a film to life. A glance at the 10 worst-performing projects of 2025, some of which earned only between 85 million and nearly 700 million VND (3,200–26,700 USD) in ticket sales despite minimum investment levels of around 10 billion VND (381,200 USD), illustrates clearly the risks investors face.
The widening gap between “100-billion-VND hits” and loss-making films also highlights a market that is highly polarised and increasingly unforgiving to both commercial and art-house productions. To survive and generate profit, prioritising stronger screenplays, enhanced production capabilities and effective distribution strategies has become essential.
Yet despite these inherent risks, Vietnamese cinema is gradually establishing itself as a key creative economic pillar within the cultural industries, steadily forming a sustainable ecosystem built upon core foundations such as stable funding sources, professional talent and sufficiently broad distribution networks to nurture the market. Policies and the creative environment are being developed and refined to attract diverse social resources into the film industry. These are the necessary and sufficient conditions to persuade investors to open their purses with confidence.
The recent commercial successes achieved by entertainment figures crossing over into cinema—such as Tran Thanh, Ly Hai and more recently Truong Giang and Thu Trang—demonstrate that film investment is a timely and forward-looking direction.
After a buoyant 2025 and a commercially successful Tet 2026 season, with between 60 and 70 films expected to be released in 2026 as cinema increasingly becomes a promising profit-generating product, Vietnamese cinema can look ahead with confidence to a take-off in the years to come.
